Knife Crime Quotes

I came from a real tough neighborhood. Once a guy pulled a knife on me. I knew he wasn't a professional, the knife had butter on it.

I walked past Malison, up Lower Main to Main and across the road. I didn’t need to look to know he was behind me. I entered Royal Wood, went a short way along a path and waited. It was cool and dim beneath the trees. When Malison entered the Wood, I continued eastward.  I wanted to place his body in hallowed ground. He was born a Mearan. The least I could do was send him to Loric. The distance between us closed until he was on my heels. He chose to come, I told myself, as if that lessened the crime I planned. He chose what I have to offer. We were almost to the cemetery before he asked where we were going. I answered with another question. “Do you like living in the High Lord’s kitchens?” He, of course, replied, “No.” “Well, we’re going to a better place.” When we reached the edge of the Wood, I pushed aside a branch to see the Temple of Loric and Calec’s cottage. No smoke was coming from the chimney, and I assumed the old man was yet abed. His pony was grazing in the field of graves. The sun hid behind a bank of clouds. Malison moved beside me. “It’s a graveyard.” “Are you afraid of ghosts?” I asked. “My father’s a ghost,” he whispered. I asked if he wanted to learn how to throw a knife. He said, “Yes,” as I knew he would.  He untucked his shirt, withdrew the knife he had stolen and gave it to me. It was a thick-bladed, single-edged knife, better suited for dicing celery than slitting a young throat. But it would serve my purpose. That I also knew. I’d spent all night projecting how the morning would unfold and, except for indulging in the tea, it had happened as I had imagined.  Damut kissed her son farewell. Malison followed me of his own free will. Without fear, he placed the instrument of his death into my hand. We were at the appointed place, at the appointed time. The stolen knife was warm from the heat of his body. I had only to use it. Yet I hesitated, and again prayed for Sythene to show me a different path. “Aren’t you going to show me?” Malison prompted, as if to echo my prayer.

Thus a man will sometimes suffer half an hour of mortal fear with a robber, but once the knife is finally at his throat, even fear vanishes.

So a man will sometimes go through half an hour of mortal terror with a brigand, yet when the knife is at his throat at last, he feels no fear. Raskolnikov

He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.) And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's. And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled, Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled, Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair - Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there! And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty's gone astray, Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way, There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair - But it's useless to investigate - Mcavity's not there! And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say: 'It must have been Macavity!' - but he's a mile away. You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs, Or engaged in doing complicated long-division sums. Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity. He always has an alibi, and one or two to spaer: At whatever time the deed took place - MACAVITY WASN'T THERE! And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known (I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone) Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

This thing comes from us, she would explain in interviews. It rips its way out of us, literally tears us in two, in a was of great pain and blood and shit and piss. If she child does not enter into the world this way, then it is cut from us with a knife. The child is removed, and our organs are taken out as well, before being sewn back inside. It is perhaps the most violent experience a human can have aside from death itself. And this performance is meant to underscore the brutality and power and darkness of motherhood, for modern motherhood has been neutered and sanitized. We are at base animals, and to deny us either our animal nature or our dignity as humans is a crime against existence. Womanhood and motherhood are perhaps the most potent forces in human society, which of course men have been hasty to quash, for they are right to fear these forces.

Night fell, and her husband came to bed, and as soon as they had finished kissing and embracing each other, he fell fast asleep. Psyche was not naturally either very strong or very brave, but the cruel power of fate made a virago of her. Holding the carving knife in a murderous grip, she uncovered the lamp and let its light shine on the bed. At once the secret was revealed. There lay the gentlest and sweetest of all wild creatures, Cupid himself, the beautiful Love-god, and at sight of him the flame of the lamp spurted joyfully up and the knife turned its edge for shame. Psyche was terrified. She lost all control of her senses, and pale as death, fell trembling to her knees, where she desperately tried to hide the knife by plunging it in her own heart. She would have succeeded, too, had the knife not shrunk from the crime and twisted itself out of her hand.

To kill for murder is an immeasurably greater evil than the actual crime itself. Judicial murder is immeasurably more horrible than one committed by a robber. Someone killed by a robber, knifed at night in forest or somewhere, certainly keeps hoping for a rescue right up to the last second. There have been instances of people whose throats have been cut still hoping for rescue right up to the last second. There have been instances of people whose throats have been cut still hoping, or running away, or pleading for their lives. But all this final hope, which makes dying ten times easier is taken away by that certain; the sentence is pronounced and the whole agony resides in the fact that there’s no escape. There is no greater torture in the world than that. Fetch a soldier and stand him right in front of a cannon during a battle and fire at him, he’ll go on hoping; but read out a certain death sentence to that same soldier and he’ll go off his head or bust into tears. Who can say that human nature can bear such a thing like that without going mad? Why this disgusting pointless, unnecessary mockery? Perhaps there exists a man who has had his sentence read out to him and been allowed to suffer before being told: “Be off, you’ve been pardoned.” That man could tell you perhaps. Christ himself spoke of such agony and terror. No, a man should not be treated so!

So a man will sometimes go through half an hour of mortal terror with a brigand, yet when the knife is at his throat at last, he feels no fear.

Eli snorted, her eyes narrowed. — Because I am like you. — What do you mean like me? I.. Eli thrust her hand through the air as if she was holding a knife, said: — What are you looking at, idiot? Want to die, or something? — Stabbed the air with empty hand. — That what happens if you look at me. Oskar rubbed his lips together, dampening them. — What are you saying? — It's not me that's saying it. It's you. That was the first thing I heard you say. Down on the playground. Oskar remembered. The tree. The knife. How he had held up the blade of the knife like a mirror, seen Eli for the first time.

You go too far,” Søren said, biting off each word. “You make choices you later regret and then blame anyone but yourself for what you suffer at your own hand. You don’t need me to hurt you. You do that to yourself. You can blame me and you can punish me for all my crimes, real and imagined. But you leave Eleanor out of this petty plan of yours to get your revenge on me. She is my heart. If anything happens to her because of you, I will castrate you. I know how much you want children. I will take that dream from you with my bare hands and a rusty knife. You know what I’m capable of. And you know I know how, because I have done it before. My father survived the procedure. You’ll be lucky if you do.

It’s been shut down now, part of a brilliant scheme to close half of London’s police stations and reduce uniformed officers on the street that has seen a surge in knife crime and made it impossible to use a mobile phone without the risk of it being snatched by thieves on motorbikes.

He now thought that he wished he was dead. He believed that he envied those men whose bodies lay strewn over the grass of the fields and on the fallen leaves of the forest. The simple questions of the tattered man had been knife thrusts to him. They asserted a society that probes pitilessly at secrets until all is apparent. His late companion’s chance persistency made him feel that he could not keep his crime concealed in his bosom. It was sure to be brought plain by one of those arrows which cloud the air and are constantly pricking, discovering, proclaiming those things which are willed to be forever hidden.

Her friends used to tell her it wasn't rape if the man was your husband. She didn't say anything, but inside she seethed; she wanted to take a knife to their faces.

It seemed to Kestrel that her life had taken the shape of a folded knife, her heart a blade inside a body of wood.

I'm not concerned with paid assassins ... mindless, soulless animals who excel at nothing else. But you, Erik ... you love all the beauty in this world ... you are a genius in so many different fields. Why do you set yourself beyond the pale of humanity by such a despicable crime?" He took off the mask and turned slowly to let me see. "This face which has denied me all human rights also frees me of all obligation to the human race," he said quietly. "My mother hated me, my village drove me from my home, I was exhibited like an animal in a cage until a knife showed me the only way to be free. The pleasures of love will always be forbidden to me ... but I am young, Nadir. I have all the desires of any normal man.

I went over and rolled the woman over on her back. She couldn’t have been much over twenty-two or three; little, gray-eyed blonde. There was a knife in her side, under the arm. There was a .38 automatic near her outstretched hand. She was very dead.

I pulled the homemade jail knife out that I had in my hand, Porkie pulled out the very sharp lockback knife that he had concealed up his sleeve. We told the warden and nurse to sit on the floor, and if they did as we told them then no one would get hurt.

Oliver Twist had found his Artful Dodger … in this instance, a young lout who had been born, quite literally, into a life of crime – slumbering in a pram that had been stolen from John Lewis. Wayne must have thought he had struck gold when he first set foot in Moxham Hall.

Look around you—there is crime and sin everywhere, greed, the pursuit of profit, quarrels and disagreements are rife. Our traditions are disappearing, respect for our values is fading. Instead of living according to Nature we have begun to destroy it. And what have we got for it? The air is poisoned by the stink of smelting furnaces, the rivers and brooks are tainted by slaughter houses and tanneries, forests are being cut down without a thought … Ha—just look!—even on the living bark of sacred Bleobheris, there just above the poet’s head, there’s a foul phrase carved out with a knife—and it’s misspelled at that—by a stupid, illiterate vandal. Why are you surprised? It had to end badly—

I ask him if he tried to rape Nyla. “Laws are silent in times of war,” Tactus drawls. “Don’t quote Cicero to me,” I say. “You are held to a higher standard than a marauding centurion.” “In that, you’re hitting the mark at least. I am a superior creature descended from proud stock and glorious heritage. Might makes right, Darrow. If I can take, I may take. If I do take, I deserve to have. This is what Peerless believe.” “The measure of a man is what he does when he has power,” I say loudly. “Just come off it, Reaper,” Tactus drawls, confident in himself as all like him are. “She’s a spoil of war. My power took her. And before the strong, bend the weak.” “I’m stronger than you, Tactus,” I say. “So I can do with you as I wish. No?” He’s silent, realizing he’s fallen into a trap. “You are from a superior family to mine, Tactus. My parents are dead. I am the sole member of my family. But I am a superior creature to you.” He smirks at that. “Do you disagree?” I toss a knife at his feet and pull my own out. “I beg you to voice your concerns.” He does not pick his blade up. “So, by right of power, I can do with you as I like.” I announce that rape will never be permitted, and then I ask Nyla the punishment she would give. As she told me before, she says she wants no punishment. I make sure they know this, so there are no recriminations against her. Tactus and his armed supporters stare at her in surprise. They don’t understand why she would not take vengeance, but that doesn’t stop them from smiling wolfishly at one another, thinking their chief has dodged punishment. Then I speak. “But I say you get twenty lashes from a leather switch, Tactus. You tried to take something beyond the bounds of the game. You gave in to your pathetic animal instincts. Here that is less forgivable than murder; I hope you feel shame when you look back at this moment fifty years from now and realize your weakness. I hope you fear your sons and daughters knowing what you did to a fellow Gold. Until then, twenty lashes will serve.” Some of the Diana soldiers step forward in anger, but Pax hefts his axe on his shoulder and they shrink back, glaring at me. They gave me a fortress and I’m going to whip their favorite warrior. I see my army dying as Mustang pulls off Tactus’s shirt. He stares at me like a snake. I know what evil thoughts he’s thinking. I thought them of my floggers too. I whip him twenty brutal times, holding nothing back. Blood runs down his back. Pax nearly has to hack down one of the Diana soldiers to keep them from charging to stop the punishment. Tactus barely manages to stagger to his feet, wrath burning in his eyes. “A mistake,” he whispers to me. “Such a mistake.” Then I surprise him. I shove the switch into his hand and bring him close by cupping my hand around the back of his head. “You deserve to have your balls off, you selfish bastard,” I whisper to him. “This is my army,” I say more loudly. “This is my army. Its evils are mine as much as yours, as much as they are Tactus’s. Every time any of you commit a crime like this, something gratuitous and perverse, you will own it and I will own it with you, because when you do something wicked, it hurts all of us.” Tactus stands there like a fool. He’s confused. I shove him hard in the chest. He stumbles back. I follow him, shoving. “What were you going to do?” I push his hand holding the leather switch back toward his chest. “I don’t know what you mean …” he murmurs as I shove him. “Come on, man! You were going to shove your prick inside someone in my army. Why not whip me while you’re at it? Why not hurt me too? It’ll be easier. Milia won’t even try to stab you. I promise.” I shove him again. He looks around. No one speaks. I strip off my shirt and go to my knees. The air is cold. Knees on stone and snow. My eyes lock with Mustang’s. She winks at me and I feel like I can do anything.

from the Adairsville PD. What you’ve got to do is imply that you understand the subject, understand what was going through his mind and the stresses he was under. No matter how disgusting it feels to you, you’re going to have to project the blame onto the victim. Imply that she seduced him. Ask if she led him on, if she turned on him, if she threatened him with blackmail. Give him a face-saving scenario. Give him a way of explaining his actions. The other thing I knew from all the cases I’d seen is that in blunt-force-trauma or knife homicides, it’s difficult for the attacker to avoid getting at least traces of the victim’s blood on him. It’s common enough that you can use it. When he starts to waffle, even slightly, I said, look him straight in the eye and tell him the most disturbing part of the whole case is the known fact that he got Mary’s blood on him. “We know you got blood on you, Gene; on your hands, on your clothing. The question for us isn’t ‘Did you do it?’ We know you did. The question is ‘Why?’ We think we know why and we understand. All you have to do is tell us if we’re right.” And that was exactly how it went down. They bring Devier in. He looks instantly at the rock, starts perspiring and breathing heavily. His body language is completely different from the previous interviews: tentative, defensive. The interrogators project blame and responsibility onto the girl, and when he looks as if he’s going with it, they bring up the blood. This really upsets him. You can often tell you’ve got the right guy if he shuts up and starts listening intently as you speak.

One final note here: you’ve probably noticed that whenever I mention serial killers, I always refer to them as “he.” This isn’t just a matter of form or syntactical convenience. For reasons we only partially understand, virtually all multiple killers are male. There’s been a lot of research and speculation into it. Part of it is probably as simple as the fact that people with higher levels of testosterone (i.e., men) tend to be more aggressive than people with lower levels (i.e., women). On a psychological level, our research seems to show that while men from abusive backgrounds often come out of the experience hostile and abusive to others, women from similar backgrounds tend to direct the rage and abusiveness inward and punish themselves rather than others. While a man might kill, hurt, or rape others as a way of dealing with his rage, a woman is more likely to channel it into something that would hurt primarily herself, such as drug or alcohol abuse, prostitution, or suicide attempts. I can’t think of a single case of a woman acting out a sexualized murder on her own. The one exception to this generality, the one place we do occasionally see women involved in multiple murders, is in a hospital or nursing home situation. A woman is unlikely to kill repeatedly with a gun or knife. It does happen with something “clean” like drugs. These often fall into the category of either “mercy homicide,” in which the killer believes he or she is relieving great suffering, or the “hero homicide,” in which the death is the unintentional result of causing the victim distress so he can be revived by the offender, who is then declared a hero. And, of course, we’ve all been horrified by the cases of mothers, such as the highly publicized Susan Smith case in South Carolina, killing their own children. There is generally a particular set of motivations for this most unnatural of all crimes, which we’ll get into later on. But for the most part, the profile of the serial killer or repeat violent offender begins with “male.” Without that designation, my colleagues and I would all be happily out of a job.

A man in disheveled clothing approaches you with a knife and tells you to give him your belongings. Imagine... You take a deep breath and blow your community assistance horn, and the local de-escalation enthusiast arrives on his unicycle. He drapes him with the comfort blanket and gives him a hug, whispering in his ear that things will be okay. You are stabbed 37 times and he uses the Subway gift card that was in your purse to buy himself a sweet onion chicken teriyaki sandwich from the $3.99 Sub of the Day menu Isn't this public safety?

Did she deserve this, Asala wondered? Did Ekrem? Did Cynwrig? Did Hafiz? The engineers who had first proposed the solar harvest? The politicians who favored whichever cause lined their pockets most? Did the flag-wavers, the finger-pointers, the us-versus-thems—did any of them, for all their greed and hate and folly, deserve punishment on this scale? Punishment in general, they deserved, herself included. A slap in the face, a knife to the throat. But not a whole world. Not every world. Their crimes, even in aggregate, did not warrant extinction. Even if it was their own fault.

I wiped the blade against my jeans and walked into the bar. It was mid-afternoon, very hot and still. The bar was deserted. I ordered a whisky. The barman looked at the blood and asked: ‘God?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘S’pose it’s time someone finished that hypocritical little punk, always bragging about his old man’s power…’ He smiled crookedly, insinuatingly, a slight nausea shuddered through me. I replied weakly: ‘It was kind of sick, he didn’t fight back or anything, just kept trying to touch me and shit, like one of those dogs that try to fuck your leg. Something in me snapped, the whingeing had ground me down too low. I really hated that sanctimonious little creep.’ ‘So you snuffed him?’ ‘Yeah, I’ve killed him, knifed the life out of him, once I started I got frenzied, it was an ecstasy, I never knew I could hate so much.’ I felt very calm, slightly light-headed. The whisky tasted good, vaporizing in my throat. We were silent for a few moments. The barman looked at me levelly, the edge of his eyes twitching slightly with anxiety: There’ll be trouble though, don’tcha think?’ ‘I don’t give a shit, the threats are all used up, I just don’t give a shit.’ ‘You know what they say about his old man? Ruthless bastard they say. Cruel…’ ‘I just hope I’ve hurt him, if he even exists.’ ‘Woulden wanna cross him merself,’ he muttered. I wanted to say ‘yeah, well that’s where we differ’, but the energy for it wasn’t there. The fan rotated languidly, casting spidery shadows across the room. We sat in silence a little longer. The barman broke first: ‘So God’s dead?’ ‘If that’s who he was. That fucking kid lied all the time. I just hope it’s true this time.’ The barman worked at one of his teeth with his tongue, uneasily: ‘It’s kindova big crime though, isn’t it? You know how it is, when one of the cops goes down and everything’s dropped ’til they find the guy who did it. I mean, you’re not just breaking a law, your breaking LAW.’ I scraped my finger along my jeans, and suspended it over the bar, so that a thick clot of blood fell down into my whisky, and dissolved. I smiled: ‘Maybe it’s a big crime,’ I mused vaguely ‘but maybe it’s nothing at all…’ ‘…and we have killed him’ writes Nietzsche, but—destituted of community—I crave a little time with him on my own. In perfect communion I lick the dagger foamed with God’s blood.

There are not many secure hospitals that can boast someone who thought he was Napoleon, but St. Cerebellum’s could field three—not to mention a handful of serial killers whose names inexplicably yet conveniently rhymed with their crimes. Notorious cannibal “Peter the Eater” was incarcerated here, as were “Sasha the Slasher” and “Mr. Browner the Serial Drowner.” But the undisputed king of rhyme-inspired serial murder was Isle of Man resident Maximilian Marx, who went under the uniquely tongue-twisting epithet “Mad Max Marx, the Masked Manxman Axman.” Deirdre Blott tried to top Max’s clear superiority by changing her name so as to become “Nutty Nora Newsome, the Knife-Wielding Weird Widow from Waddersdon,” but no one was impressed, and she was ostracized by the other patients for being such a terrible show-off.

May 19th 2031_ Eleven months before_ I opened my eyes to see darkness and the sound of my alarm beeping. 0400 hours. I turned it off and got up. I looked for my glasses on my bedside cabinet and put them on. "Alexa, Good morning roll," I said loudly in the dark room. The lights came on and the curtains opened, the speaker turned on and started playing my Spotify playlist. I slowly got dressed and made myself breakfast. After breakfast, I downed a 500ml bottle of zero coke. I leaned to one side and burped. I looked around my kitchen. The dark marble counter and white cupboards, walls and ceiling matched with each other. I looked outside the kitchen window at the traffic down below. I was about 6 floors high, if you were to jump off from that high, there is a very high chance you might die. And if you were lucky to survive, you would be immobilised from your broken legs and hip and ribs. I turned around and sat on the black leathery sofa and switched on the TV. I looked on Netflix at old World War Two films that I could watch before bed. I scrolled through the list. From 'Dunkirk' to 'Unbroken' to a lot more films. I chose a couple and switched the TV onto the news. The reporter said that there was a knife crime in Redding earlier. I sighed but was relieved that it wasn't me. It is a low chance that I would get murdered by someone or people with knives in England but it's still a possibility. I turned the TV off and looked at my phone. There was nothing new on Discord and nothing new on WhatsApp. I checked my Snapchat and opened a few Snaps from my friends at work. I took a selfie of myself in my apartment not working. I sent it off and was happy that I don't work on

Being a hangman requires you to take someone else’s life based on someone else’s judgment, and carry it out on someone else’s schedule. The job does not provide the same satisfaction that an ordinary murderer gets from smashing a skull. It robs them of the fulfillment of plunging a knife into someone’s throat. In the world of capital punishment, the prisoner’s crimes have been sanitized by years of sitting on death row. By then, the execution is a cold and impersonal affair. There is prayer, a noose, and a few last words. The prisoner then experiences a sudden rush of blood to the head. At the end of it all, you have a broken neck and a dead body swinging from the end of a rope. That is it. You don’t get to manhandle them with your own hands. That’s why the brutes you mention will never be hired. So you see, Vaida, this is not a job for a murderer. It is a job for a humanitarian.

For the second day running you have burnt my toast!” Let me explain this ludicrous remark. You were this particular prefect’s fag. That meant you were his servant, and one of your many duties was to make toast for him every day at teatime. For this, you used a long three-pronged toasting fork, and you stuck the bread on the end of it and held it up before an open fire, first one side, then the other. But the only fire where toasting was allowed was in the library, and as teatime approached, there were never less than a dozen wretched fags all jostling for position in front of the tiny grate. I was no good at this. I usually held it too close and the toast got burnt. But as we were never allowed to ask for a second slice and start again, the only thing to do was to scrape the burnt bits off with a knife. You seldom got away with this. The prefects were expert at detecting scraped toast. You would see your own tormentor sitting up there at the top table, picking up his toast, turning it over, examining it closely as though it were a small and very valuable painting. Then he would frown, and you knew you were for it. So now it was night-time and you were down in the changing room in your dressing gown and pajamas, and the one whose toast you had burnt was telling you about your crime. “I don’t like burnt toast.” “I held it too close. I’m sorry.” “Which do you want? Four with the dressing gown on, or three with it off.” “Four with it on,” I said. It was traditional to ask this question. The victim was always given a choice. But my own dressing gown was made of thick brown camel’s hair, and there was never any question in my mind that this was the better choice. To be beaten in pajamas only was a very painful experience, and your skin nearly always got broken. But my lovely dressing gown stopped that from happening. The prefect knew, of course, all about this, and therefore whenever you chose to take an extra stroke and kept the dressing gown on, he beat you with every ounce of his strength. Sometimes he would take a little run, three or four neat steps on his toes, to gain momentum and thrust, but either way, it was a savage business.

Although Mollie’s disappearance created a stir in the Digbys’ neighborhood, it did not immediately warrant unusual notice in New Orleans as a whole. Hundreds of children went missing in the city every year. Most were later found and returned to their parents. In a metropolis plagued by crime and violence, moreover, Mollie’s disappearance was just one of many unsavory events that day. On that same Thursday, a boy stabbed his friend in the head in a dispute over a ball game. A jewel thief robbed a posh Garden District home. Two toughs fought a gory knife battle on St. Claude Avenue. A drowned child was found floating in the Mississippi River. A prostitute in the Tremé neighborhood stole $30 from a customer. Someone poisoned two family dogs. And two women in a saloon bloodied one another with broken ale bottles as they fought over a lover. Because crime was so common, most incidents received little attention. If a crime occurred in a poor district, on the docks, or in one of the infamous concert saloons, or if its victim was an immigrant or black person, it seldom warranted more than a sentence or two in the “City Intelligence” columns of the dailies. 5

Morbidity and Mortality Rounds Forgive me, body before me, for this. Forgive me for my bumbling hands, unschooled in how to touch: I meant to understand what fever was, not love. Forgive me for my stare, but when I look at you, I see myself laid bare. Forgive me, body, for what seems like calculation when I take a breath before I cut you with my knife, because the cancer has to be removed. Forgive me for not telling you, but I’m no poet. Please forgive me, please. Forgive my gloves, my callous greeting, my unease— you must not realize I just met death again. Forgive me if I say he looked impatient. Please, forgive me my despair, which once seemed more like recompense. Forgive my greed, forgive me for not having more to give you than this bitter pill. Forgive: for this apology, too late, for those like me whose crimes might seem innocuous and yet whose cruelty was obvious. Forgive us for these sins. Forgive me, please, for my confusing heart that sounds so much like yours. Forgive me for the night, when I sleep too, beside you under the same moon. Forgive me for my dreams, for my rough knees, for giving up too soon. Forgive me, please, for losing you, unable to forgive.

It ain’t no crime in a prisoner to steal the thing he needs to get away with, Tom said; it’s his right; and so, as long as we was representing a prisoner, we had a perfect right to steal anything on this place we had the least use for, to get ourselves out of prison with. He said if we warn’t prisoners it would be a very different thing, and nobody but a mean ornery person would steal when he warn’t a prisoner. So we allowed we would steal everything there was that come handy. And yet he made a mighty fuss, one day, after that, when I stole a watermelon out of the nigger patch and eat it; and he made me go and give the niggers a dime, without telling them what it was for. Tom said that what he meant was, we could steal anything we needed. Well, I says, I needed the watermelon. But he said I didn’t need it to get out of prison with, there’s where the difference was. He said if I’d a wanted it to hide a knife in, and smuggle it to Jim to kill the seneskal with, it would a been all right. So I let it go at that, though I couldn’t see no advantage in my representing a prisoner, if I got to set down and chaw over a lot of gold-leaf distinctions like that, every time I see a chance to hog a watermelon.

You fought well on Mona, my Mules, but I have brought you here for a little more javelin practice.’ The words carried along the line and Valerius could see men grinning at the unlikely familiarity. ‘Those who stand before you have murdered, tortured and raped Roman citizens, men, women and children; innocents whose only crime was to attempt to bring civilization to this land. They butchered and mutilated your comrades of the Ninth, and the brave veterans of Colonia who fell defending the Temple of Divine Claudius.’ He paused and the silence was filled by a growl, like an enormous dog gathering itself for the attack. ‘We offered them our friendship, our trust and our aid, and they took all with smiles of thanks, but when we turned our backs they reached for the knife and the sword and the spear, as is their way. They believe you are already defeated.’ ‘No!’ The massed roar carried across the valley and echoed from the banks. ‘They are the true face of barbarism. They are your enemy. They show no mercy and they deserve no mercy. Give them none. For Rome!’ ‘For Rome!’ The words erupted from ten thousand throats and Valerius felt the ice in his belly melt and the first stirrings of life return to his heart. ‘For Rome,’ he whispered.

Pedro Algorta, a lawyer, showed me the fat dossier about the murder of two women. The double crime had been committed with a knife at the end of 1982, in a Montevideo suburb. The accused, Alma Di Agosto, had confessed. She had been in jail more than a year, and was apparently condemned to rot there for the rest of her life. As is the custom, the police had raped and tortured her. After a month of continuous beatings they had extracted several confessions. Alma Di Agosto's confessions did not much resemble each other, as if she had committed the same murder in many different ways. Different people appeared in each confession, picturesque phantoms without names or addresses, because the electric cattle prod turns anyone into a prolific storyteller. Furthermore, the author demonstrated the agility of an Olympic athlete, the strength of a fairground Amazon, and the dexterity of a professional matador. But the most surprising was the wealth of detail: in each confession, the accused described with millimetric precision clothing, gestures, surroundings, positions, objects..... Alma Di Agosto was blind. Her neighbours, who knew and loved her, were convinced she was guilty: 'Why?' asked the lawyer. 'Because the papers say so.' 'But the papers lie,' said the lawyer. 'But the radio said so too,' explained the neighbours. 'And the TV!

—I have been understood. At the opening of the Bible there is the whole psychology of the priest.—The priest knows of only one great danger: that is science—the sound comprehension of cause and effect. But science flourishes, on the whole, only under favourable conditions—a man must have time, he must have an overflowing intellect, in order to “know.”... “Therefore, man must be made unhappy,”—this has been, in all ages, the logic of the priest.—It is easy to see just what, by this logic, was the first thing to come into the world:—“sin.”... The concept of guilt and punishment, the whole “moral order of the world,” was set up against science—against the deliverance of man from priests.... Man must not look outward; he must look inward. He must not look at things shrewdly and cautiously, to learn about them; he must not look at all; he must suffer.... And he must suffer so much that he is always in need of the priest.—Away with physicians! What is needed is a Saviour.—The concept of guilt and punishment, including the doctrines of “grace,” of “salvation,” of “forgiveness”—lies through and through, and absolutely without psychological reality—were devised to destroy man’s sense of causality: they are an attack upon the concept of cause and effect!—And not an attack with the fist, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! On the contrary, one inspired by the most cowardly, the most crafty, the most ignoble of instincts! An attack of priests! An attack of parasites! The vampirism of pale, subterranean leeches!... When the natural consequences of an act are no longer “natural,” but are regarded as produced by the ghostly creations of superstition—by “God,” by “spirits,” by “souls”—and reckoned as merely “moral” consequences, as rewards, as punishments, as hints, as lessons, then the whole ground-work of knowledge is destroyed —then the greatest of crimes against humanity has been perpetrated.—I repeat that sin, man’s self-desecration par excellence, was invented in order to make science, culture, and every elevation and ennobling of man impossible; the priest rules through the invention of sin.

Rape has been described by victim advocate and former police officer Tom Tremblay as “the most violent crime a person can survive.”10 Those who have not been sexually assaulted can perhaps most clearly understand the experience of a survivor by thinking of them as having survived an attempted murder that used sex as the weapon. Sexual violence often doesn’t look like what we think of as “violence”—only rarely is there a gun or knife; often there isn’t even “aggression” as we typically think of it. There is coercion and the removal of the targeted person’s choice about what will happen next. Survivors don’t “fight” because the threat is too immediate and inescapable; their bodies choose “freeze” because it’s the stress response that maximizes the chances of staying alive . . . or of dying without pain. Trauma isn’t always caused by one specific incident. It can also emerge in response to persistent distress or ongoing abuse, like a relationship where sex is unwanted, though it may be technically “consensual” because the targeted person says yes in order to avoid being hurt or feels trapped in the relationship or is otherwise coerced. In that context, a survivor’s body gradually learns that it can’t escape and it can’t fight; freeze becomes the default stress response because of the learned pattern of shutdown as the best way to guarantee survival. Each person’s experience of survival is unique, but it often includes a kind of disengaged unreality. And afterward, that illusion of unreality gradually degrades, disintegrating under the weight of physical existence and burdened memory. The tentative recognition that this thing has actually happened incrementally unlocks the panic and rage that couldn’t find their way to the surface before, buried as they were under the overmastering mandate to survive. But survival is not recovery; survival happens automatically, sometimes even against the survivor’s will. Recovery requires an environment of relative security and the ability to separate the physiology of freeze from the experience of fear, so that the panic and the rage can discharge, completing their cycles at last.

Chip and I were both exhausted when we finally pulled up in front of that house, but we were still riding the glow of our honeymoon, and I was so excited as he carried me over the threshold--until the smell nearly knocked us over. “Oh my word,” I said, pinching my nose and trying to hold my breath so I wouldn’t gag. “What is that?” Chip flicked the light switch, and the light didn’t come on. He flicked it up and down a few times, then felt his way forward in the darkness and tried another switch. “The electricity’s off,” he said. “The girls must’ve had it shut off when they moved out.” “Didn’t you transfer it back into your name?” I asked. “I guess not. I’m sorry, babe,” Chip said. “Chip, what is that smell?” It was the middle of June in Waco, Texas. The temperature had been up over a hundred degrees for days on end, and the humidity was stifling, amplifying whatever that rotten smell was coming from the kitchen. Chip always carries a knife and a flashlight, and it sure came in handy that night. Chip made his way back there and found that the fridge still had a bunch of food left in it, including a bunch of ground beef that had just sat there rotting since whenever the electricity went out. The food was literally just smoldering in this hundred-degree house. So we went from living in a swanky hotel room on Park Avenue in New York City to this disgusting, humid stink of a place that felt more like the site of a crime scene than a home at this point. Honestly, I hadn’t thought it through very well. But it was late, and we were tired, and I just focused on making the most of this awful situation. So we opened some windows and brought our bags in, and I told Jo we’d just tough it out and sleep on the floor and clean it all up in the morning. That’s when she started crying. I lay down on the floor thinking, Is his what my life is going to look like now that I married Chip? Is this my new normal? That’s when another smell hit me. It was in the carpet. “Chip, did those girls have a dog here?” I asked. “They had a couple of dogs,” he answered. “Why?” You could smell it. In the carpet. It was nasty. I was just lying there with my head next to some old dog urine stain that had been heated by the Texas summer heat. It was like microwaved dog pee. It was. It was awful. It was three in the morning. And I finally said, “Chip, I’m not sleeping in this house.

You might well wonder how on earth, after all their countless betrayals and cruelties, men like Agathocles could sit safe on their thrones for years and even defend themselves against foreign enemies without their citizens ever conspiring against them; and this while many others, equally ready to use cruelty, weren’t even able to hold on to their power in peacetime, never mind in war. I think it’s a question of whether cruelty is well or badly used. Cruelty well used (if we can ever speak well of something bad) is short-lived and decisive, no more than is necessary to secure your position and then stop; you don’t go on being cruel but use the power it has given you to deliver maximum benefits to your subjects. Cruelty is badly used when you’re not drastic enough at the beginning but grow increasingly cruel later on, rather than easing off. A leader who takes the first approach has a chance, like Agathocles, of improving his position with his subjects and with God too; go the other way and you have no chance at all. It’s worth noting that when you take hold of a state, you must assess how much violence and cruelty will be necessary and get it over with at once, so as not to have to be cruel on a regular basis. When you’ve stopped using violence your subjects will be reassured and you can then win them over with generosity. If you don’t do all it takes at the beginning, because you were badly advised or didn’t have the nerve, then you’ll always have to be wielding the knife; and you’ll never be able to count on your subjects, since with all the violence you’re handing out they won’t be able to count on you. So get the violence over with as soon as possible; that way there’ll be less time for people to taste its bitterness and they’ll be less hostile. Favours, on the other hand, should be given out slowly, one by one, so that they can be properly savoured. Most of all, though, a ruler should have the kind of relationship with his subjects where nothing that can happen, good or bad, will force him to change his approach, because if hard times demand it, your cruelty will come too late, while any concessions you make will be seen as wrung out of you and no one will be impressed. 9 Monarchy with public support Now let’s turn to our second case, where a private citizen becomes king in his own country not by crime or unacceptable violence, but with the support of his fellow-citizens. We can call this a monarchy with public support and to become its king you don’t have to be wholly brilliant or extraordinarily lucky, just shrewd in a lucky way. Obviously, to take control of this kind of state you need the support of either the common people or the wealthy families, the nobles. In

There is no solution for Europe other than deepening the democratic values it invented. It does not need a geographical extension, absurdly drawn out to the ends of the Earth; what it needs is an intensification of its soul, a condensation of its strengths. It is one of the rare places on this planet where something absolutely unprecedented is happening, without its people even knowing it, so much do they take miracles for granted. Beyond imprecation and apology, we have to express our delighted amazement that we live on this continent and not another. Europe, the planet's moral compass, has sobered up after the intoxication of conquest and has acquired a sense of the fragility of human affairs. It has to rediscover its civilizing capabilities, not recover its taste for blood and carnage, chiefly for spiritual advances. But the spirit of penitence must not smother the spirit of resistance. Europe must cherish freedom as its most precious possession and teach it to schoolchildren. It must also celebrate the beauty of discord and divest itself of its sick allergy to confrontation, not be afraid to point out the enemy, and combine firmness with regard to governments and generosity with regard to peoples. In short, it must simply reconnect with the subversive richness of its ideas and the vitality of its founding principles. Naturally, we will continue to speak the double language of fidelity and rupture, to oscillate between being a prosecutor and a defense lawyer. That is our mental hygiene: we are forced to be both the knife and the wound, the blade that cuts and the hand that heals. The first duty of a democracy is not to ruminate on old evils, it is to relentlessly denounce its present crimes and failures. This requires reciprocity, with everyone applying the same rule. We must have done with the blackmail of culpability, cease to sacrifice ourselves to our persecutors. A policy of friendship cannot be founded on the false principle: we take the opprobrium, you take the forgiveness. Once we have recognized any faults we have, then the prosecution must turn against the accusers and subject them to constant criticism as well. Let us cease to confuse the necessary evaluation of ourselves with moralizing masochism. There comes a time when remorse becomes a second offence that adds to the first without cancelling it. Let us inject in others a poison that has long gnawed away at us: shame. A little guilty conscience in Tehran, Riyadh, Karachi, Moscow, Beijing, Havana, Caracas, Algiers, Damascus, Yangon, Harare, and Khartoum, to mention them alone, would do these governments, and especially their people, a lot of good. The fines gift Europe could give the world would be to offer it the spirit of critical examination that it has conceived and that has saved it from so many perils. It is a poisoned gift, but one that is indispensable for the survival of humanity.

Two women sat behind a large reception desk opposite the three massive turnstile doors and across an expansive lobby. They were probably mild-mannered receptionists, but they appeared more akin to someone you’d meet in the dead of night with a large knife.

What Purple Hair had said rooted in her mind like a malignant tumor. She wanted to take a knife and cut it out.

She pressed her lips together, without moving. “You know, Captain, there’s something about this latest crime.” “What’s that?” “On site, the MEs counted thirty-seven stab wounds for the girl and forty-one for the kid…They had them all over their bodies, including the genitals. Deep wounds, several inches down. Sometimes the knife went to the hilt—they could see the marks the metal left around the slits. Given the characteristics, the similarities in the stabbing patterns, they think it’s the work of a single attacker.” The commanding officer answered with silence. There was nothing to say. Lucie stared at him intently. “There’s pure madness in this, Captain. In their movements, their way of operating. Something not right in the way they’ve been proceeding. The same kind of irrationality we saw in those kids in the film, more than fifty years ago.

replied, and thought of Cathy Jones. “Touch that door handle, and I’ll let go,” she’d said, whilst balancing herself on the extreme edge of a chair, her fingers tucked beneath a noose she’d fashioned from torn bedsheets. It had taken ninety minutes to talk her out of it, he recalled, and when he’d finally left the room, he’d vomited until there was nothing but acid left in his stomach. Acid, and the burning shame of knowing that a part of him had wanted her to die. Even while he’d talked her out of it, employing every trick he knew to keep her alive, the deepest, darkest part of his heart had hoped his efforts would fail. Connor watched some indefinable emotion pass across Gregory’s face, and decided not to press it. “Briefing’s about to start,” he said, and left to join his brother at the front of the room. Casting his eye around, Gregory could see officers from all tiers of the Garda hierarchy, as well as various people he guessed were support staff or members of the forensics team. At the last minute, an attractive, statuesque woman with a sleek blonde bob flashed her warrant card and slipped into the back of the room. Precautions had been taken to ensure no errant reporters found their way inside, and all personnel were required to show their badge before the doors were closed. Niall clapped his hands and waited while conversation died down. “I want to thank you all for turning out,” he said. “It’s a hell of a way to spend your weekend.” There were a few murmurs of assent. “You’re here because there’s a killer amongst us,” he said. “Worse than anything we’ve seen in a good long while—not just here, but in the whole of Ireland. There’s no political or gang-related motivation that we’ve found, nor does there seem to be a sexual motivation, but we can’t be sure on either count because the killer leaves nothing of themselves behind. No blood, no fingerprints, no DNA that we’ve been able to use.” He paused, gathering his thoughts. “Contrary to what the press have started calling him, the ‘Butcher’ isn’t really a butcher at all. It’s our view that the murders of Claire Kelly and her unborn child, and of Aideen McArdle were perpetrated by the same person. It’s also our view that this person planned the murders, probably weeks or months in advance, and executed their plans with precision. There was little or no blood found, either at the scene or on the victims’ bodies, which were cleaned with a careful eye for detail after the killer dealt one immobilising blow to the head, followed by a single knife wound to the heart. These were no frenzy attacks, they were premeditated crimes.” One of the officers raised a hand. “Is there any connection between the victims?” she asked. “Aside from being resident in the same town, where they were casual acquaintances but shared no immediate family or friends, they were both female, both married homemakers and both mothers.” “Have you ruled out a copycat?” another one asked, and Niall

I am the heart of a murdered woman who took the wrong way home who was strangled in a vacant lot and not buried who was shot with care beneath a tree who was mutilated by a crisp knife. There are many of us. I grew feathers and tore my way out of her; I am shaped like a feathered heart. My mouth is a chisel, my hands the crimes done by hands. I sit in the forest talking of death which is monotonous: though there are many ways of dying there is only one death song, the colour of mist: it says Why Why I do not want revenge, I do not want expiation, I only want to ask someone how I was lost, how I was lost I am the lost heart of a murderer who has not yet killed, who does not yet know he wishes to kill; who is still the same as the others I am looking for him, he will have answers for me, he will watch his step, he will be cautious and violent, my claws will grow through his hands and become claws, he will not be caught.

cops only find crime where they look for it. If you make every Black person you see turn out their pockets, you will find every knife and every dime-baggie that any Black person carries, but that doesn’t tell you anything about whether Black people are especially prone to carrying knives or drugs, especially when cops make quota by carrying around a little something to plant if need be.

Immigrant parents were poorly equipped for the challenges of contemporary parenting in the urban twenty-first-century Europe. They behaved as though they were still back at home in Bangladesh or Ethiopia, where there was a surrounding cushion of extended family and friends supporting their parenting, casting a protective eye on all the children around them, because that is the way children had always been raised, collectively. In London, there was no such protection; there were gangs and knife crime, predators on Facebook and Instagram, whole collections of virtual and physical threats. These parents assumed the mosque and Quran classes were safe spaces, but the reality was that there were no safe spaces left, period, online or in the real world.

I want to die.” May shook her head. “Let me get a knife.” “I’ve made a horrible mess of things.” “Haven’t we all? If you don’t want your supper burned, die quietly while I get back to the kitchen.

He attained the highest mastery of Korean martial arts—he could hurl himself through the air and crack cement blocks with his bare hands. In knife-fighting drills, he developed a thousand different reflexes to disarm and stab people. He learned to shoot all manner of firearms…Justin Moon had become the ideal South Korean soldier—with stony strength, quickness, and above all, endurance.

If you meet her, you will like her. The con woman's likability is the single most tool she has, sharp as a chef's knife and fake as a theatre mask. Without her likability, she would be nothing. If you like her—and you will like her—then her work will be so much easier. It'll all be over quickly. You'll hardly feel a thing.

She continued to stare at the floor. She felt herself starting to cry. “Come on, say it: ‘I only wanted the knife.’” “Tony,” Jane said, “enough.” Tony bent down and picked up the knife. “Oh stop crying, Sarah. This is what you were after, wasn’t it? Or did you want to practice bending spoons or something?” He turned, showed the knife to Jane, standing somewhere near the ladder. “Check this out. Little one thought she’d try to take a knife.” “But why?” Jane said in a baby voice. “To stab us?” Sarah suddenly stalked past Tony. Jane stepped aside as she went for the ladder. She climbed it as fast as she could. “That’s right, get upstairs, high society!” Tony called after her. Sarah ran to the cot and sank down, face in her pillow. “And no more food, by the way! Remember the half-eaten sandwich down here, ‘cuz the dogs are getting it. You just lost mess hall privileges.

She approached the couple and watched them for a moment. They looked pathetic, writhing down there in the sand and fumbling at each other’s clothes like desperate, love-struck teenagers. They disgusted her. The male sensed her presence and turned to face her. She immediately noticed the fear behind his stubborn glare and it aroused her. Her scar throbbed and pulsated as she withdrew the knife from the sheaf and dragged it across his throat. As the blade tore through flesh and sinew she once more heard the retort of the rifle, felt her cheekbone shatter. The blood poured from him just as the blood had spurted from the wound in the deer’s throat.

You speak so easily of war, when so many of your brothers and sisters lie dead at the bottom of the ocean, at the hands of the King’s navy. That is war.” “When the maggot infested, mouldy bread runs out, and you’re so desperate for food that you daydream about finding a rat to cook, and stare contemplative at your fingers. That is war.” “When you’re conscripted, spend years killing people, for a king, who look just like you, and come home to find your wife in bed with a man who dodged the call of battle. That is war.” “When your people, your kind and everyone you love are hunted down and butchered like pigs in their sleep whilst they lay abed, just because of their ancestry. That is war.” “When mothers put their daughters to the sword, rather than letting the victors have them as spoils of war. That is war.” “When your wife fades away in your arms, simply because you and your kind have been labelled persons of interest for the knife. That is war.” “When you sacrifice everything so that your daughter might live a better life, away from persecution, prejudice and fear, and then she is taken from you anyway. That is war.

Killing with a knife is very personal; you actually are holding it as it goes in, and when death comes, you can feel your victim dying through the knife. It’s like sex.

Behind every successful man is a knife that he hides.

I’d watched Russian Doll recently, then sat down to watch the news, and a section on knife crime caught my attention. This is how it happens for writers. Never at the desk, never at the right time, but always, inevitably, the ideas come, and I think this is my best one yet.

I always wanted to be blind folded and throw knives at a pretty girl spinning on one of them big wheels. back then i used to throw knives at everything, you know, to see how good my aim was. I tell you, i could hit a mosquito with a knife and pin it to a wall as it flew by.

Soon it will be different. Soon there will be a night when we’re in my car and she’s screaming, raging, stabbing herself in the arm with a knife she’s pulled from her purse. Blood all over her, me and the dashboard. Me tearing up my shirt to bind her arm with. Her crying and saying she’s sorry. Everything being different, and then there being nothing between us.

Sept 27-69-6.30 by knife by Stewart Stafford I am the thief on the golden hill, Predator in sight, a hooded chill, Masked, armed and primed to strike, Prey pinned by the lake, as I like. Tie them up on blankets, used, In time they'll see it's all a ruse, Pretend to leave, then come back, Back-slashed in a frenzied attack. Left to die, their assailant gone, Darkness falls on two bleeding fawns, Stagger up the hill to try and get aid, Passing out as the lifeforce fades. Flashlight in the eyes, back for the kill! Help arrives, shakily standing still, Message on his car, Zodiac was here, He lived, she passed, and then only fear. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

RELATIVE DIFFICULTY OF KNIFE-BASED ACTIVITIES FROM EASIEST TO MOST DIFFICULT, WITH SHARPENING A PENCIL REPRESENTING THE MEDIAN If you can REACH FOR A KNIFE then you can PICK UP A KNIFE If you can PICK UP A KNIFE then you can DIP A KNIFE IN A BATHTUB If you can DIP A KNIFE IN A BATHTUB then you can SMEAR JELLY WITH A KNIFE If you can SMEAR JELLY WITH A KNIFE then you can CUT A LOAF OF BREAD WITH A BREAD KNIFE If you can CUT A LOAF OF BREAD WITH A BREAD KNIFE then you can CUT A STEAK WITH A STEAK KNIFE If you can CUT A STEAK WITH A STEAK KNIFE then you can CARVE A TURKEY WITH A CARVING KNIFE If you can CARVE A TURKEY WITH A CARVING KNIFE then you can CARVE A TOTEM POLE WITH A CHAINSAW If you can CARVE A TOTEM POLE WITH A CHAINSAW then you can SHARPEN A PENCIL WITH A POCKETKNIFE If you can SHARPEN A PENCIL WITH A POCKETKNIFE then you can WHITTLE A DUCK WITH A POCKETKNIFE If you can WHITTLE A DUCK WITH A POCKETKNIFE then you can SHAVE A THREAD WITH A STRAIGHT RAZOR If you can SHAVE A THREAD WITH A STRAIGHT RAZOR then you can REMOVE A CORNEA WITH A SCALPEL If you can REMOVE A CORNEA WITH A SCALPEL then you can MAKE A LOT OF MONEY If you can MAKE A LOT OF MONEY then you can HAVE AN AFFAIR WITH YOUR SECRETARY If you can HAVE AN AFFAIR WITH YOUR SECRETARY then you can BE BLACKMAILED If you can BE BLACKMAILED then you can IMAGINE COMMITTING A CRIME If you can IMAGINE COMMITTING A CRIME then you can REACH FOR A KNIFE

For example, Britain today is suffering from an “epidemic” of “knife crime.”​ To wit: every day in Great Britain, 60 people are stabbed or mugged with a knife.​ (Admire, for a moment, the passive voice.​ Presumably the knives are floating disembodied in the air, directing themselves with Jedi powers.)​

I heard screaming,” Atticus heard himself say lamely. The man blinked in confusion, holding up his knife. “They do that when you poke them with this.” Atticus gave him a pissy look. “Yes, I’ve connected the dots, thank you.

This time, however, Henry had had enough of his mother and her orders. He kindly told her to go back to where she’d come from, and this drove Viola into a rage. She grabbed a broom and hit it across his head as she’d done so many times before; breaking it, but Henry wasn’t a helpless little boy anymore. He threw himself on his mother and struck her in the neck with the first object he could grab and watched her fall to the ground. Only then did he realize that he’d cut open her throat with a knife.

Then they both kept knifing him against the door with alternate and easy stabs, floating in the dazzling backwater they had found on the other side of fear. They didn't hear the shouts of the whole town, frightened by its own crime.

One of the most important long-term changes that arose as a result of this case was the creation of the “murder bag” for use by police. Spilsbury had been shocked to see police officers having to remove rotting flesh and body parts from the scene of the crime using their bare hands. To address this problem, a series of meetings were held between Scotland Yard and Spilsbury, which led to the development of the murder bag, which contained rubber gloves, tweezers, evidence bags, a magnifying glass, compass, ruler, and swabs. Such a bag is now an essential part of any major inquiry and may contain various items, depending on the specific department. Common modern additions include a fiberglass brush, lifting tape, powder, utility knife, scissors, a blood test, a semen test, swabs, alcohol hand spray, scalpels, and goggles

I had no idea what “mira” meant. But the boy was holding a baseball bat in a distinctly threatening manner, and I understood immediately what was happening to us. We were being robbed. Damned if I can remember my friend’s name, but we were two white kids in the park. The other boys were Puerto Rican. Our patch of the city was still teeming with thousands of white ethnic families like the Kellys—Irish, Jews, Italians, assorted eastern and northern Europeans, all living on top of each other. But the neighborhood was just getting its first wave of Puerto Ricans. Even an eight-year-old could sense fresh tension on the sidewalks and in the parks. No one flashed a knife or a gun that day. The baseball bat was more than enough to grab my attention. One of the older boys reached his hands around my neck and started squeezing. I could feel other hands reaching into my pockets. I had no money. No one had cell phones or other electronic devices back then. As I gasped for oxygen and my eyes began to bulge, I stole a glance at my friend, who looked just as terrified as I was. The boys were rifling through his pockets too. The next thing I heard was someone saying “zapatos.” A couple of boys shoved us down on the path, while others yanked at our shoes. Barely pausing to untie the laces, they pulled the shoes right from our feet, then ran off into the park. Neither of us was hurt in the robbery, except for our sense of security and our city-kid pride. But it was a genuinely rattling experience, one that stuck with me and made me empathetic to crime victims for the rest of my life: New York’s future police commissioner and his third-grade classmate walking forlornly home across West Ninety-First Street with nothing but dirty white socks on their feet.

...ninety percent of violent crimes are committed by men," Caroline was saying. "All day long I bandage up women and children whom men have raped, knifed, beaten, shot, strangled. And you yourself live with one of those fuckers, Hannah. You say you love him. You repose under the tent of benefits his white American male privilege provides--at the expense of the rest of us. You try getting through life without a man to protect you from the violence of other men. Then see if you can talk to me about joy!

This had to happen at some point,’ the grey-haired druid declared suddenly. ‘This had to happen. We forgot that we are not he only ones in this world, that the whole of creation does not revolve around us. Like stupid, fat, lazy minnows in a slimy pond we chose not to accept the existence of pike. We allowed our world, like the pond, to become slimy, boggy and sluggish. Look around you - there is crime and sin everywhere, greed, the pursuit of profit, quarrels and disagreements are rife. Our traditions are disappearing, respect for our values is fading. Instead of living according to nature we have begun to destroy it. And what have we got for it? The air is poisoned by the stink of smelting furnaces, the rivers and brooks are tainted by slaughter houses and tanneries, forests and being cut down without a thought. Ha just look! Even on the living bark of sacred Bleobheris, there just above the poet’s head, there’s a foul phrase carved out with a knife - and it’s misspelled at that - by a stupid, illiterate vandal. Why are you surprised? It had to end badly.

Saving Lives is against Bullying in Schools Saving Lives is against Crimes Against Humanity Saving Lives is against Domestic Violence Saving Lives is against Poverty Saving Lives is against Animal Cruelty Saving Lives is against Child Labor Saving Lives is against Child Soldiers Saving Lives is against Knife Crimes Saving Lives is against War Saving Lives is against Slavery Saving Lives is against Guns Saving Lives is against Famine Saving Lives is against racism

The devil, or whatever force was behind that disembodied knife in her mind, has never made anyone do anything. The devil just applauds when it happens.

There’s the horror-movie version: a shadow with a knife, the one who escaped from the hospital on the hill during that storm. It’s the person living in the walls. In mystery novels, it might be the smiling stranger, the one with the passing knowledge of poisons. It’s the relative left out of the will, or the one recently added to it. It’s the jealous colleague at the museum who wants to be the first to announce the new archeological discovery. It’s the overly helpful person who follows the detective around. On the all-murder, true-crime channel, it’s the new neighbor with the boat, the one in his midforties to midfifties with the tan who has no past and who recently purchased a human-sized cooler. It’s the person who lives in the shack in the woods. It’s the unseen figure on the corner of the street. On all crime shows, it’s usually the third person the cops interview. It’s the one you sort of think it is. In life, the murderer is anyone. The reasons, the methods, the circumstances—the paths to becoming a murderer are as numerous as the stars. Understanding this is the first step to finding a murderer. You have to shut down the voices in your mind that say, “It has to be this person.” Murderers aren’t a type. They’re anyone.

Jack the Ripper was a frenzy killer, who seemed to kill because he took exception to ladies who lived on the street in the Whitechapel area. He used a knife and seemed to be enraged at several of the murder scenes. On the other hand, Holmes seemed to be a very calculated killer. He would gas people and did not prefer to use a knife, until after death, where he would dismember the bodies for disposal or sale. This is still the most compelling argument against Holmes being Jack the Ripper.